Oddsmakers may have Texas as nearly a one-touchdown underdog going into its Cotton Bowl matchup against Ohio State on Friday, but the Longhorns were feeling at home when they arrived in the Dallas-Fort Worth area on Wednesday.
“Yeah, being in Texas, an out-of-state opponent coming in, it does feel like a home game,” said Longhorns quarterback Quinn Ewers. “Obviously, (we’ve) got a lot of guys from DFW, so that helps for sure.”
Ewers is among the Texas players who from that area, and he has a few memories, good and bad, of playing at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, home of the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys.
On the bright side, he led Texas to a Big 12 championship in the building a season ago, throwing for 452 yards and four touchdowns. On the not-so-bright side, he lost a state championship in his final high school game at Southlake Carroll, a powerhouse program in the area.
“Two different outcomes of a game. You know, winning is a whole lot nicer, especially a Big 12 championship game,” Ewers said. “But going back to it, I just enjoy playing in this stadium for sure.”
His teammates echoed those thoughts. Many were on the Big 12 title team a year ago and/or also competed for state championships in the venue.
“It’s a blessing to have another opportunity to be in the stadium, to make the most of it,” said defensive back Jahdae Barron, who was on the Big 12 title team. “We won’t take anything for granted.”
–Ohio State wide receiver Emeka Egbuka confirmed the mindset throughout the Buckeyes locker room is that, “We haven’t done anything yet,” despite what has been a successful season by most measures.
“I have been here for four years, and I have absolutely no hardware to show for it. That’s really on the forefront of our minds,” Egbuka said. “We’re glad we were able to give Buckeye Nation a couple of good wins, but we are nowhere near done.”
Several of his teammates expressed the same sentiment on arrival day. All spoke of how close and tight-knit the team is and the shared pursuit to win the program’s first championship in a decade.
“That’s the biggest thing about our team right now — we’re just fighting to get another opportunity to play with each other,” linebacker Cody Simon said. “It could be our last (game), but if we do everything we need to do, we get another one. That’s our biggest motivator right now. We just want to stay together. We don’t want to end this run right now.”
–Ohio State offensive coordinator Chip Kelly returned to a coordinator role for the first time since 2009 when he joined Ryan Day’s staff last offseason. It’s a move he doesn’t regret even if it caught some in the college football world by surprise.
Kelly said he is having fun.
“This group of players is great,” he said. “The fact that we get to be around the kids, it’s been awesome. It’s a great coaching staff. We hope to keep it together one more week.”
–Texas had a forgettable rushing attack in its victory over Arizona State in the Peach Bowl, averaging just 1.8 yards per carry (53 yards on 30 carries). Longhorns running back Quintrevion Wisner addressed the performance and motivation to fix it.
“Whenever we don’t perform, we just know, all right, now we’ve got to get back, get right, get back in the lab, fix things that we messed up and just affect the next game how we didn’t affect this one,” Wisner said.
–Asked to describe Ohio State’s offense in one word, Texas defensive coordinator Pete Kwiatkowski said: “Explosive.”
–Field Level Media
